The Smug Tyranny of Marriage

Apparently, marriage gives us a gravitas and it makes us smug – according to Lara Pawson. I have to say, that she can speak for herself, frankly.

Having been married for seven years she wants a divorce and to go back to living with her husband and he agrees. So what’s stopping them? Lara wanted a civil partnership, yet married in a civil ceremony at a register office. That is a civil partnership. Okay, we call it marriage and it has a specific legal status, but civil it is, there’s no God, no hymns, no prayers, just the exchange of vows and a ring, whereupon you sign the register and the signatures are witnessed. That’s it, so this is rampant nonsense, frankly:

Being married pulls you into a new elite. It lends you an air of stability and reliability that singles and divorcees are denied. We assume that those who are unmarried probably have something just a teeny bit wrong with them because they have never managed to persuade another to settle down into that cosy unit of coupledom. This is the smug tyranny of husbands and wives.

Tyranny?! Not too many histrionics, then. I – and Mrs L – were no different after exchanging rings than before. We remained the same people, merely we had made commitments to each other. There was no tyranny involved – and you’d have to belong to the Guardian school of fatuousness to even consider such foolishness. At no time have I ever looked upon single or divorced people and assumed that there was something just a teensy bit wrong with them, but then, I am not a patronsing bigot. I am not aware of anyone in the real world outside the rarefied atmosphere of the Guardian who thinks that either. Only in the Groan can something as simple as making a commitment to the person you love become a tyranny.

 Again, I turn to Tatchell [must you? – Ed]. Five years ago he wrote: “Many non-sexual friendships are as sincere, loyal and enriching as relations between people in love. They, too, should have legal recognition.”

Why? Why should the state be involved at all? There speaks the libertarian in me.

I did like the comment left by Croyboy10

…its like peering through the looking glass into a strange world inhabited by bizarre creatures…..’…..This is the smug tyranny of husbands and wives….’ fantastic !!

That’s pretty much how I feel. Strange creatures indeed. Only in the Groan can marriage be turned into a tyranny. Most of us decide to marry, tie the knot and get on with life. Not for the Guardianista, though. Those odd entities in their own version of Wonderland who have to over-analyse and see offence where none exists. The pages of the Guardian are a curious, dreamlike place where ethereal beings float in celestial superiority, unpolluted by the realities of the world outside, safe in the assumptions that their weird and wonderful fantasies are, in fact, reality.

I wonder what would happen if someone were to burst their bubble?